It is a problem in the field of alarm devices that there are numerous hazards that can be threatening to the occupants of a dwelling or a predetermined locale, and existing hazard detection sensors are available to detect the presence of a predetermined level, concentration, or intensity of the hazard. In practice, autonomous alarm devices are located in fixed locations, for example, within a dwelling and respond to the incorporated hazard sensor to automatically generate an alarm indication, such as an audible alarm, to identify the presence of a hazard proximate to the alarm device. However, the audible alarm only alerts the occupants of the dwelling who are presently located proximate to the active autonomous alarm device. Alternatively, integrated home protection systems output an audible alarm via all alarm devices located in a dwelling, but without providing any indication of the locus or nature of the detected hazard. Therefore, existing alarm devices and systems are limited in their effectiveness in alerting occupants of a dwelling and/or providing an identification of the nature and locus of the detected hazard.
Present integrated home protection systems are pre-wired into a dwelling and typically function both as a burglar alarm system and a hazard detection system. These integrated home protection systems use a centralized architecture comprising a master-slave topology to manage a plurality of remotely located sensors and a plurality of remotely located alarm devices that are located in a dwelling. The master-slave topology has all of the remote (slave) sensors reporting alarm events to the central control unit which then responds by audibly alarming ALL remote alarm devices in the system and, if so designed, sending an alarm indication to an external agency, such as the local fire department. However, the integrated home protection systems fail to provide an audible alarm that directs the occupants to the location of the hazard or away from the hazard and/or provides an indication of the nature of the detected hazard or whether an indication of the hazard has been received at a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) that serves the dwelling, factory, office or school campus.
If an integrated home protection system is not installed in the dwelling at the time of construction or remodel, the remaining protective solution is to purchase and install multiple stand-alone autonomous alarms that are placed in different locations in the dwelling (garage, kitchen, bedrooms, and so on). However, these stand-alone alarms (fire, smoke, CO2, natural gas), while alarming for an event in their immediate area, do not alert other areas of the dwelling of a potential danger. Therefore, the occupants of the dwelling may not hear the alarm, and in multiple family dwellings, the occupants of units other than the one containing the active alarm are not likely to hear the active alarm.
Thus, presently available stand-alone alarm devices (consumer purchasable devices) operate autonomously since they have neither a master-slave topology (since no master exists) nor do they have an ad hoc or mesh networking ability to communicate with other peer-like alarm devices. In particular, the lack of any peer-to-peer alarm device communication capability causes the alarm system to only “alarm” in the area of the alarm event. This lack of systemic alarming capability means that large portions of a dwelling are not alerted to a given hazardous event and provide limited effectiveness due to their autonomous mode of operation and their reliance on local audible alarms to perform the alerting function. In addition, these systems fail to provide the ability to receive communications from external sources in response to an alarm event, or provide output devices that are networked to cover a spatial area that may not be coextensive with the spatial area covered by the alarm devices.
Thus, there is a need for an emergency event alarm network that coordinates the operation of multiple alarm devices that are located throughout a dwelling or multiple units of a multi-family dwelling or a factory, or office or a school campus. In addition, there is a need for an emergency event alarm network that networks multiple alarm devices together without the need for extensive and expensive wiring to interconnect the alarm devices. Finally, there is a need for an emergency event alarm network that provides an audible indication that a report of the hazard has been received at a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) or private security agency or emergency responder organization that serves the dwelling, and that can provide an output in a spatial area that may not be coextensive with the spatial area covered by the alarm devices.